I brought the raid healing strategies up to the current version of what people are doing, based on the feedback I got from the surveys. I also did a major revison for the Nourish & Lifebloom strategy pages. My strategy also now talks about 10-man and 5-man strategies in addition to the most common 25-man strategies, so that it is more sensitive to the needs of new players (while still containing useful info for more experienced players, too).

I went over the new talent specs I’m recommending for 3.3.There are currently 4 versions, and at this point, choosing your talent specs for 3.3 leaves you with a lot of options & choices (which is both good and bad). Picking your talent specs feels like a “choose your own adventure” book rather than just picking up one “cookie cutter” spec. The short version is that haste is now more important, so Celestial Focus is more useful as we work on hitting the 856 haste cap (with raid buffs).

I revised my plan on how to glyph in 3.3, along with further explaining when I recommend using the rapid rejuv glyph. This is something I’d like to get feedback from other people about once we’ve actually been able to try out the new glyph in raids.

And more!

EDIT: The leveling guide revamp wasn’t done in time, so I’ll have to spend the next week or so updating it.

19 comments on “Blog 3.3 healing guide now updated!”

Hey there, I have a question regarding haste and the changes to Gift of the Earthmother.

Previously, if I understand it properly, GotEM was 20% off the GCD for hots.

Now it’s 10% spell haste.

Given Swift Retribution Aura or Improved Moonkin form (3% haste to all affected by the aura or Moonkin buff) and Wrath of Air totem (5% spell haste), isn’t the haste soft cap much smaller than 800-some? I’m doing some math and, if I’m understanding it properly, a resto druid with, say, 581 haste + new GotEM + SRA/Imp Moonkin + Wrath of Air Totem = 0.9645 second GCD.

If you’re raiding reliably with those buffs, is there any point to picking up Celestial Focus in the balance tree, since 1 second is the GCD hard cap?

I know you’re generally trying to reach a wide audience, but there’s still a few things I think you should be more specific about:

1) Recommending dropping Revitalize. Revitalize, even only the mana component of it, typically returns more mana to your raid than Innervate in an equal amount of time. I doubt you’d drop Innervate if it were a talent. And that’s not even including the Energy/Runic Power gains which are actually the best part–it directly adds raid DPS. Like I said, I know you’re keeping it open to 5-mans and tank healing and other situations, but it seems worth emphasizing that Revitalize should be considered mandatory (especially when we’re trying to keep things somewhat simple for a general-use guide) for raid healing purposes.

2) Emphasizing the tradeoff inherent in Rapid Rejuv. There are times it’s good, and also times it’s explicitly bad. You mention at the end that you’re going to swap based on content, but you should probably point out that Rapid Rejuv should _always_ be considered on a fight-specific basis–it’s a choice you make between focused healing and spread healing.

3) Glyph of Regrowth might be worth considering. A pretty niche use, but since I (and recommend this approach to any high-end raider) will be using Regrowth almost exclusively in place of Nourish for direct raid heals.

It’s really hard having a guide that applies to everyone. Personally, I just haven’t grown to be attached to revitalize – so I see it as being just as optional as other people treat living seed. This is probably because my raid runs really druid heavy, has replenishment, and no one ever complains about mana.

I have to leave it up to people to decide what exactly they want to do for talents. People (in the end) don’t follow what I tell them. I give guidelines, not rules.

We don’t yet know when rapid rejuv is good versus bad. When we know more about that, I can flesh it out.

3 cont’d) So in situations where Rapid Rejuv is a bad idea, even though Regrowth probably won’t do all that much, it’s still a more useful third glyph than Nourish. Worth having a similar place on the list of options.

4) I really disagree with your assessments of the T10 set bonuses (maybe this should have come first). The 2T10 is very weak by any measure. The concept is good, which why I think people are favoring it too much. It would be a nice idea for a bonus if it weren’t, numerically, grossly underpowered. No way you’d give up 4T9 for this.

Inversely, the 4T10, assuming it works like we think it will based on the wording, is pretty nice. Not quite as nice as the 4T9 or 4T8, but still good. I’d definitely plan on wearing it if you can make haste cap with it, which you probably can by the time you have access to 4 pieces of T10. But even if not, it’s probably worth losing some haste for. I’d recommend going straight from 4T9 to 4T10 (like we did from 4T8 to 4T9 previously).

That’s not true–look at my Armory now. Haste-capped going into 3.3 with 4T9 (also 2 haste and 2 crit pieces, like it will be in T10). I know not everyone has access to the same gear I do, but:
1) one or two ICC loots can fix that, or even a badge item, by the time you have access to 4T10.
2) 2 or 3 haste gems can make up for the gap–you’d easily give up a few spellpower gems for that set bonus.
3) I’m a Tailor, which gives up some haste.

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I’m not trying to be overly narrow with the comments–I know if I wrote a guide for Resto like I did for Moonkin, it would look quite different from yours and be focused on progression raiding. But a lot of things still apply at any level.

Since it is on the WOw forums, I have to cater to a little bit of everything – and I expect this current guide to grow over time as people settle into the changes & I get better feedback about what talents people are actually picking up, how they are adjusting to the haste gear changes, and so forth.

Based on the feedback I got, a lot of the newer druids (who come straight out of my leveling guide) felt that it was too big of a jump to get into my healing guide because I didn’t originally write it at their level. I do, however, understand your points & I’ll keep it in mind when I have time to do my next revision. I do have the “progression” raiding specs as options, and then some non-progression options mixed in there, too. I could be less harsh about the regrowth glyph, though.

I saw your glyph recommendations, and my guess is that the most common glyph set you will see for 25 man raiders is…

Swiftmend, Wild Growth, Rapid Rejuv

The only way I see a 25 man resto druid using the Nourish glyph is due to Icecrown fight mechanics. Aka, if we see a lot of Gormok type encounters (ala heroic Northrend Beasts) where you have 4-5 tank healers who are spamming 10k+ heals non-stop.

I don’t actually expect rapid rejuv to be beneficial in 25-mans, since it reduces the number of people you can have rejuv on at any one time. Since rejuv won’t last as long, there are going to be a high probability of the drawbacks being worse than the bonus.

You still see a lot of 25-man raiders using nourish (especially since it’s going to be super speedy) to handle burst.

After filling out your survey about what I expected to happen in 3.3, I have to say, 3.3 is only one day old, yet my healing is already waaaaay more different than I was expecting.

I’m probably going to uncover more things as I go, but:
+I used tranquility more times today than I used in the last three months combined.
+I used nourish at least twice as much as I used in any other instance in the past three months.
+The spell that I used less of as a result was… regrowth.

Did anyone else notice being forced to change your healing habits on the fly today?

I can adjust my guide on the fly. Everyone’s healing is going to change in new content. However, I’ve given pretty much THE most flexible healing strategy guidance, so I feel like my guide (right now) is much more of a “choose your own adventure” book…

I have found that in Pit of Saron on Tyrannus, my tank still usually takes very heavy damage from the party and from empower, and the party damage is also quite high. In order to make sure I have full hots on the tank at all times, I’ve begun using the strategy of casting wild growth on the tank as soon as my lifebloom stacks are about to drop off so that I can bring them right back up again with minimal interruption in heals over time. It’s not really wasted since the melee dps can almost always use the heals as well. It’s definitely situational, but I have found it really helps in that particular situation where the fight can quickly get very out of hand if someone makes a mistake.

Hi I have a question that is actually confusing for me with your guide. It is about haste cap, what is the unbuffed haste cap that I should aim for? if it is 856 then by the looks of it I will never get it.